Sunday 25th May 2008 was the day that Marianne and Liam would drive down from Macclesfield, and we would meet up at the static caravan in Hamble (wasn't that the doll from Play School?) that Maz had booked for four nights. So immediately after breakfast, Jimmy and I set off for somewhere in the South nowhere near to where we were! I had calculated that if we got out and activated Detling Hill G/SE-013 and Cheriton Hill G/SE-015 before Marianne arrived on the scene, then we had a good chance of completing the SE region, since everything else was daytrippable within "normal" limits!

We left Winchester after thanking our B&B hosts for the comfortable beds and excellent full breakfast. Immediately, the JimNav kicked into action to direct me up the A31 and A3 to the M25, then across from there to J7 for Detling Hill G/SE-013. Stations heard en route included 107.2 Dream (Winchester), 107.3 South London Radio, 1350 (MW) Dorton Radio, 963 (MW) Club Asia, 95.6 BRFM (Isle of Sheppey), 107.9 KMFM Medway and 105.1 Southend Radio.

   

We first checked for parking and walk-start points along the A249. There were opportunities for the former, but the one path we found was so overgrown with wet grass, nettles and bracken as to make it a non-starter. We drove around, and instead took the cul-de-sac lane from the village of Thurnham, parking in a pull-in at TQ806581.  We ascended up the short path to the trig point, and looked around for where the true summit might be, some 2m higher, but indistinct on this long flat top. It could have been even where the house was! Further inspection revealed a large summit car park, possibly 1m higher than the trig point, although I couldn't work out where the access point was for that car park.

   

Three stations were worked by me, and two by Jimmy, on 2m FM in fairly short order before noon. Then we had a silent gap of 20 minutes before another three each were worked and the summit was in the bag. One of the stations worked, we suspected, was on the aforementioned summit car park on our hill, so we made sure we had extra QSOs in the logbook to make sure!  We went QRT at 12.30pm local, and commenced the 5 minute descent to our parking spot. Now it was south towards Folkestone for Cheriton Hill G/SE-015.  Many thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM with 5 watts: